


Empty and Desolate, The Air

by asparkofgoodness



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Aziraphale, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Language, Love, M/M, Nonverbal Communication, Prayer, Silence, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), T. S. Eliot References, Wounded Crowley, Writing, loss of voice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-02
Updated: 2019-08-02
Packaged: 2020-07-28 09:47:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20062012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparkofgoodness/pseuds/asparkofgoodness
Summary: Ever a guardian, Aziraphale kept watch.  Sliver-shafts of moonlight sliced ribbons across Crowley’s face.  The emptiness of it unnerved the angel.  Even in slumber, his expressive face had always told stories.  Syllables shifted in the corners of his mouth; sentences found themselves punctuated with the movement of an eyebrow.  Now, only still silence, even in sleep.Heavenly forces decide the best way to get their once-dutiful soldier back is to slaughter his only real reason for rebellion.  Their attempt leaves Crowley wounded and voiceless.  Aziraphale tries his best to heal him and accept the soundlessness of this new verse of their song.





	Empty and Desolate, The Air

"Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,

Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not

Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither

Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

_Oed' und leer das Meer._"

\- T.S. Eliot, [The Waste Land](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land)

All was silent save for the language of the garden: birdsong and the buzzing of bees.

The blessed blade slid through skin and sinew, stilling as it settled inside his ribcage.Searing pain burned in red-hot flashes across his chest.Breath caught; lung collapsed.Gritting his teeth against the gnawing heat of the metal, he squeezed his eyes shut, bowing his head in a silent refusal to give them the pleasure of hearing his torment, seeing his fear.A disobedient, agonized grunt escaped his lips as the angel dragged the blade out, inch by inch, deliberately slow.Warmth blossomed across his stomach.Through slitted eyes, he watched his silver blood stain his shirt, drip from Sandalphon’s retreating hand.

_Think of something,_ his mind pulsed._Think of something.Say something.Do something.Or else. _ Weakly, he lifted his knees an inch from the soil, the start of an attempt to stand.The metal shackles binding his hands behind his back scalded his wrists.A hand  grabbed a fistful of his auburn hair, jerking his head up and back.Golden eyes met lilac ones. 

“Come, now,” Gabriel chuckled from where he stood behind him.“You’re doubly trapped.You’re not going anywhere.”A pause as Sandalphon shifted closer and Gabriel said to him, “we need to get a move on, before we’re interrupted.”

_Oh, you’ve got time,_ Crowley thought.Aziraphale wouldn’t be back from the shops for hours.Jaw clenched tightly, he glanced sideways at the empty patch of ground he had intended to fill with lavender that afternoon.Infuriatingly fitting that his story would end here, in the garden he had so carefully tended for nearly forty years, behind the home they had come to cherish.More so, even, than Eden, this place was their beginning; now, with one blind step across an invisible line, it would be his destruction and their end.

Gabriel spoke again to Crowley, voice full of arrogance and loathing.“You fooled us back then, I’ll give you that, but look at you now.I knew if we gave you time, let you play human in this stupid town for long enough, you’d let your guard down.We’ve had that circle sitting out here for, oh, months now – concealed from demonic sight, of course – and you walked right into it.So you will die, and Aziraphale will eventually forget why he turned away from us.He will return where he belongs and he will fight for us again, in the new war to come.In time, he won’t even remember you.”Gabriel smiled, inverted in Crowley’s field of vision.

“Never,” Crowley choked out.“He would never go back to –“Something hot and wet pressed against his neck: the blade.Instinctively, he jerked sideways and felt the edge cut a small track in his taught skin. 

Gabriel’s grip on his hair tightened.“Enough.Time to die.”His eyes fell shut, inner voice pleading with him to take action while the throbbing pain in his gut pulled his focus and slowed his thoughts.Nothing came to mind but Aziraphale: the horror that would mar his lovely face when he discovered Crowley’s body, the crumble and collapse into grief, his blue-green eyes dulled under pooled tears.Every speck of power Crowley possessed trembled uselessly just underneath his skin, detained by the shackles and the circle around him.There was nothing he could do.

A tremor hummed through the air as the blade bit into his neck.A breathy cry, foreign to his ears but coming from somewhere in him, penetrated his cotton-muffled consciousness.Nails drew droplets of blood from the palms of his clenched fists.Light was streaming in from somewhere to his right.Metal cut deeper and his voice sputtered to silence.All was blinding pain and light and quicksilver sticky warmth cascading down his chest, and then, a lightening.His hair, released.The blade, lifted. 

Eyes flew open and took in the garden cast in brilliant white, a photo negative.A hallucination, perhaps, as braincells starved and withered?Or the light humans said they saw before death claimed them?Air moved around him.A flash: a lightning strike?Head heavy, he folded forward, ink spreading across the edges of his vision.One final fall, into darkness yet again.

Soft hands caught him: one cradling the back of his head, the other amplifying pain with firm pressure on his neck.A burst of short-lived strength.The circle had been broken.The restraints tumbled from his wrists.He was laid gently down in the cool embrace of fern and columbine.White curls.Bright, panicked eyes._Aziraphale_, he tried to say, _run.They want you back.What are you doing wasting time on me, you perfect idiot?__Aziraphale_, he tried to say, _I love you.I’m sorry._But instead of words, a sickly, wet sound.

“Shh, don’t –Don’t try to speak.”Sweat and tears mixed on the angel’s face, and flecks of gold dotted his skin.Fingers stroked his cheek.His face was wet, too.“I know it hurts and I – I am so sorry, dear, but I have to staunch the bleeding.”More pressure.Waves of agony behind his eyes. 

“They’re gone now.You’re safe.You – oh,” and Aziraphale’s tender voice broke as his eyes swept over Crowley’s chest.A hand found the gash in his stomach and pain bloomed there, too.“I know it was holy metal, but – we have to try." The angel's voice was an unsteady song, breathy and full of vibrato. "Crowley, listen, with anything you have left, you need to try, okay?”With a reassuring nod, Aziraphale closed his eyes.

Hazily, he lingered in the homecoming of Aziraphale's face before him, a sense of misplaced calm settling over his body.It wouldn’t work – Angelic blades permanently injure occult entities deep beneath their corporations’ flesh. – but he would try, for him.Crowley reached down into his core, desperately shoving pain aside, and found reserves of frantic energy.Power surged through his veins. Cells divided, mercurial blood replenishing.It wasn’t a solution, but it would buy him time, and it was the best he could do.

Aziraphale’s warm energy flowed over his neck and ribcage.The sharp stinging calmed slightly to a pulsing ache.Weak and exhausted, Crowley watched Aziraphale concentrate, beautifully in his element, until the angel’s eyes reopened and fear took back its hold on his visage.Shakily, the hand on his neck lifted.Crowley read surprise and slight relief in the angel’s eyes. 

“An improvement, certainly,” he said, trying to sound calm, though his breath came shallow and quick.“Bandages, now.Ready?”A snap sounded in the distance; gauze wrapped tightly around his wounds, covering rows of stitches that had strung themselves through jagged skin.“Much better.You’ll be alright.”_You’ve always been a terrible liar,_ he thought.Superficial patching was all their energy could do.“Let’s get you inside.”

Tenderly, Aziraphale gathered him in his arms and lifted him.Fresh pain burst forth as his body shifted.He fought to keep heavy eyelids open and caught still images of the scene: evening primroses inching open for the night; hyacinths, named for the one whose blood first created them, dripping with silver; the smudged, broken edge of a devil’s trap in the dirt; a tree trunk sprayed with golden spatter. 

At the last image, his eyes opened wide, mind sharpened with worry.He ran a heavy hand over Aziraphale’s chest, earning him a concerned look.An attempt to say _Yours? _required breath that wouldn’t come, and so he gestured vaguely at the tree and looked up into the angel’s pale face.

“Oh, darling,” and the hold on his body tightened, “it’s not mine.Don’t worry.”Eyes fell closed.“Here, we’re almost there.”The creaky hinges of their front door.The click of the lock behind them.The ten footfalls to their bedroom.The soft give of their duvet.Aziraphale’s presence began to draw back and Crowley shot out his hand, grabbing a wrist that froze at his touch.“I’m not going anywhere, but I can’t let you–“His voice tightened and he swallowed thickly.“I’ll clean you up, change of clothes, okay?” 

A snap, but nothing happened.Aziraphale swayed on his feet, blinking.“Shit,” he whispered, then recovered his soothing tone.“Have to do it the human way, then.But…”Brows furrowed, he glanced at the bedroom door, then back down at Crowley.“Well, in a moment, when you’re settled.”

His vision darkened, then returned as he felt the familiar pressure of the angel’s body on the mattress next to him.Aziraphale moved cautiously, studying Crowley’s face as he settled down and slid fingers through rust-red hair.Lips pressed a kiss to his sweat-slick forehead.

Sleep tempted him with escape, but as his eyes closed again, he heard a panicked “You –Crowley?” and forced them back open.“You need to stay awake.It’s vitally important.”Tears tumbled down Aziraphale’s face, and Crowley tried desperately to obey, but there were shadows curling in around the edges of his eyes.More than anything, he wanted to speak, but their energy had only been enough to stop some of the bleeding, not repair deeper damage._Thank you, _he would have said._Stay.I’ll return._Against his will, he slipped into sleep.

* * *

A sweet smell drifted into the cottage's studio on dreamy, heavy afternoon air.Perched on a stool, Crowley glared at a canvas smeared with azure hues.The paint was not behaving properly, and the whole piece was one more bad brushstroke away from spontaneous combustion when the sound of the door opening made him pause, paintbrush raised.Aziraphale entered, and the sight of him spread a grin across Crowley’s face: he was dotted from head to toe in flour.

“That’s off to a beautiful start,” the angel said, words slowing as he took notice of Crowley’s expression.“I like… What?”A glance downward.“Oh.”A sheepish smile.“I thought I’d try my hand at brioche.The book made it look simple enough, but, well, I ran into some difficulty with the mixer, and then after it all, you’re expected to have the patience to wait for the dough to rise for hours before baking it…”

Grabbing hold of his hand, Crowley tugged Aziraphale closer to him and wiped flour from his cheek with a thumb.“Couldn’t wait, could you?” he asked slyly, and guilt crossed the angel’s face.“Well, it smells delicious.”Leaning on the edge of the stool, he spread his legs wider and pulled Aziraphale forward by the hips until the space between them disappeared.“Still, I thought patience was a virtue,” he murmured as he tilted his chin up and kissed Aziraphale’s lips.

“It is.”Another kiss.“But there’s no harm in speeding things along, either, sometimes.”

There was an absurd beauty in the realization that the angel before him could drown nations, burn sinful cities to the ground, plant dreams into the minds of men that would alter the course of human history, and yet, here he was, settled in South Downs with a demon, miracling dough to rise.Crowley looked up at him as if he were the sun itself, wondering if Aziraphale had any idea of the limitlessness of his power.

As he had done countless times since the move, since the peaceful seclusion of the cottage had made it first safe to voice his ancient adoration, Crowley opened his mouth to say _I love you, angel, _but only heard a sickening sputter.In horrified confusion, he pulled shaking hands away from Aziraphale’s hips and touched the ruin of his throat.Where there had been blue paint on his fingertips, now, there was argent blood.When he looked up from his hands, Aziraphale had disappeared and the stool was collapsing under him and he was falling, voiceless, back into the darkness of sleep.

* * *

The feeling of falling jolted him awake.Gold eyes flew open and a second passed and then the pain rushed back to him all at once in a train-wreck of sensation.Teeth ground.Muscles seized.Hands dug into the duvet.Then Aziraphale’s hands were on him, warm and healing.  Dark circles had formed under bloodshot blue eyes, and his skin looked frighteningly pale in the half-light of the room.

Angelic energy smoothed the edges of the pain, but it still rang through him, the equivalent of covering one’s ears against a shrill alarm.The hands withdrew and he watched Aziraphale wipe his face with a shirtsleeve.He had no idea how long he had been asleep.

“You… you’re…”Aziraphale, voice hushed and relieved, reached for words that unraveled on his tongue. "I..."

Testing his body, Crowley managed a small breath in, all that his collapsed lung would allow, but the air died silently in his throat.He raised his hand and mimed writing in mid-air.

“Oh!Um, yes, hang on,” and Aziraphale grabbed a book and pen from the nightstand.“Here,” he said as he held the pen out to Crowley, opened to a random page.“Write in the margins.”

In jagged script, Crowley scrawled two words and tipped the book so Aziraphale could read them.“_Love you”_

A stifled sob.“I know.And I love you.You know that.You're my world, my everything.”Aziraphale’s thumb traced his jawline and Crowley leaned ever so slightly into the touch.

_"They’re after you_.  _Go_ _”_

Shock and offense at the suggestion.“No.I won’t leave you, and you’re in no condition to be moved.Don’t be absurd.”A deep breath.“They’re not a threat anymore.Not for the time being, anyway.”

Crowley raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

For the first time in two days, Aziraphale looked away from Crowley, gaze hardening.“I’m not exactly sure what happened.It was all a blur.My only concern was you.Whatever I did to them, well, they deserved it, and I doubt they’ll be able to return.At least, not soon.But if they do, I’ll be right here” he said quietly, voice warming as he returned his focus to Crowley’s face, “and they won’t come near you again.”

"_Should be dead”_To clarify, he added an _“I” _to the left of the phrase.

Aziraphale winced and exhaled slowly. “And yet, you’re not.You’re here.Perhaps I interrupted them before… Or… I don’t know…”His voice grew high and tight.“I’m not going to question it.You can’t… because I couldn’t…”

The emotions battling on Aziraphale’s face became too much for his foggy mind to handle.Crowley looked away and noticed his stained, torn clothes.With a look of disgust, he gestured at them and the angel’s face twisted in guilt.“Sorry.Any ounce of energy that returns to me, I’ve routed right into healing you.So I can’t miracle you clean, and I didn’t want to hurt you, doing it by hand.”Not to mention he’d have to leave the room to get supplies, and he couldn’t pry himself away from Crowley’s side.

Crowley’s expression told him he was being ridiculous.“Fine, if you feel up for it, I will.”A small, weak nod.“Okay, I’ll…”Aziraphale stared at him as if worried he would disappear.“I will be right back.”

Drifting in and out of consciousness, Crowley heard Aziraphale reenter the room, felt the gentle tug of fabric being removed from under him._Like that magician’s trick, _he mused, _with the tablecloth and plates_.Except he was already shattered into sharp pieces.Not much more damage could be done.

Wet cloth slid over skin, back and forth on silver stains.Humans have been bathing bodies just like this in parlors and in morgues since their departure from the Garden.Crowley had seen them do it, feeling like a voyeur in the face of their human grief every time.He had heard them speak to the dead: apologies, confessions, questions hovering permanently in the air without answer.Only silence from the dead, and now, from him.What power lived in language, to prove _I am here.I can ask and answer.Listen._Under the reverent attention of his angel, he was lulled to sleep once more.

* * *

Ever a guardian, Aziraphale kept watch.Sliver-shafts of moonlight sliced ribbons across Crowley’s face.The emptiness in it unnerved the angel.Even in slumber, his expressive face had always told stories.Syllables shifted in the corners of his mouth; sentences found themselves punctuated with the movement of an eyebrow.Now, only still silence.

Crowley’s presence had always felt thunderously loud to him.Even in the early days, he would shatter Aziraphale’s peace with surprise greetings, bursting forth from a crowd or calling his name across a room.Always a retort, always a bark of laughter or a groan of discontent.Somehow, even when he listened, he listened with his whole body; Aziraphale could read volumes in the shifts of his feet and the tilt of his chin.Sharing a home allowed him to hear new sounds he hadn’t been privy to before.After a night of drinking, Crowley snored.When concentrating in quiet spaces, he hummed to himself.He shouted at sappy films and cursed at cooking mistakes and Aziraphale, who had always lived in lonesome quiet, had come to cherish every word.

Exhaustion ignited into rage.They had no right to his voice, his life.What did they even know of him?Ancient questions?Disobedient objections?He was so much more: faltering bravado, endearing temper, sibilant begging, whispered affection, unwavering love.His.He was his. And Aziraphale would do whatever needed to be done to keep him here.

Shifting into his true form that day had taken so much from him, and he had regretted it instantly upon realizing just how deeply they had injured Crowley.Angelic energy took time to rebuild once depleted, and as it sparked and replenished in his core, he drained it into Crowley’s body, emptying himself again and again.He hadn’t left the room for days, at least.Dust had settled around them on the four-poster bed.

His mind wandered, recalling memories and verses to pass the time, but when it ventured near that afternoon in the garden, he stopped it.He refused to consider what he had done to Gabriel, what it meant for him.If Crowley’s life could only be purchased with Gabriel’s, if he had incurred a debt only repayable with his own Fall, he accepted those terms without hesitation.

Every instinct in him called for prayer, but his belief in a God who listens had withered half a century ago.Still, he spoke.It was a prayer, yes, but not to Her.It started with an invocation, the one name in which he held unwavering faith.“Crowley,” he breathed, lingering on the holy sound of his name.“You’ve always been so strong.Your will becomes reality here on Earth.I’ve seen it happen.Give it a try.For me.Forgive me for not being enough to heal you on my own.Forgive me for needing you so selfishly.You can save yourself, I know it.You have the power, somewhere.This can’t be it.We’re meant to have forever.”_And ever.Amen._

* * *

_“Look like hell”_

“Just the sight of you awake is lovely, my dear.”

_“Not me.You”_

A shaky laugh.“Haven’t exactly had the energy to keep up appearances, now.So sorry.”He had lost track of how much time he had spent lying quietly next to Crowley, watching, healing, hoping.

Crowley, propped upright now against the headboard and pillows, gave a fond smile and wrote _“Standards?”_

“Oh, stop,” Aziraphale chuckled as he unbuttoned Crowley’s pajama shirt.

Crowley’s physical pain was still present, but it had dulled significantly, and somehow, inconceivably, the invisible cancer of the blessed metal’s damage had ceased to spread.It should have consumed him, and yet, it hadn’t.They each had their separate theories – Aziraphale’s strength, Crowley’s willpower, the humanizing effects of isolation from above and below, the otherness of their own side – but neither would ever voice them.Neither dared to question it.And he was still far from out of the woods: he couldn’t even draw the breath required to ask for a compass.

“Focus, now.”Aziraphale placed both hands on the bandage below Crowley’s left rib and closed his eyes.Crowley did his part, meeting Aziraphale’s energy with the little of his own he had cultivated.

When they were both spent, Aziraphale leaned back, their shoulders touching.Slowly, Crowley laced their fingers together.His eyes were closed.A scar ringed round his wrist, a souvenir of captivity.The silence of the room pressed heavily on Aziraphale’s eardrums.He wished for anything to shatter it: a word, a laugh, a breath, even, just the whisper of an inhale.Nothing came.

He tried to be thankful for the silence.After all, the air could be filled with angelic fury, with the sharp hissing of fiery weapons.It could crackle with burning feathers.It could carry a death rattle to his ears, bringing with it his ending, too.The way things were headed, they still could communicate; it could have been much, much worse.Aziraphale sat, warm palm pressed against Crowley’s cold one, and attempted to accept the soundlessness of this new verse of their song.

* * *

Eventually, Crowley urged him away from his post. 

_“Eat something”_

_“Shower”_

_“I’m fine”_

"_Get some fresh air”_

_“Please eat”_

An irritated eye-roll when the angel insisted he wouldn’t miracle up food for himself._“Pears are ripe on the trees.Go”_

Finally, he listened, disappearing for an hour here and there but always returning, a homing pigeon carrying stories and healing hands back again to Crowley’s quiet sanctuary.One day, as he reluctantly walked down the hall, bedroom at his back, something stopped him.

Aziraphale had heard the first word ever born on a human tongue.When Adam opened his mouth and began to name the creatures of the Garden and the Heavens, a strange and lovely music formed, so different from the celestial language of angels it defied comparison.As Adam christened his wife, baptized his body – _bone, flesh, rib_ – the young angel cherished each vibration.How precious, the melodies of the human voice.Out of that language, variations branched forth, harmonies.Eventually, Babel brought discord, baffling and beautiful.The early ages had rippled with vocal ringing, and as Aziraphale loved the humans, so he loved their languages. 

But, oh, no word ever mattered more than this.Its sandpaper sound was a shipwreck, dredged out of the deep, tempest-tossed nearly past recognition, but within its hull lay golden promise.It was a name, just like the first.Its syllables rose and broke over him, shattering months of silence and leaving him shaking in its wake.“Aziraphale,” he heard.A clipped song, a single note of adoration.Spinning, he took in the impossible sight of Crowley leaning against the doorframe.Carefully, carefully, with stunned and speechless gratitude, the angel wrapped him up in trembling arms.

**Author's Note:**

> It's not every day that you write something, go reading some of your favorite poems looking for inspiration for a title, and find lines that almost exactly describe what you've already written. (If I've been possessed by Mr. Eliot, I have absolutely no objections.)
> 
> The title comes from “Oed’ und leer das Meer” which means “empty and desolate the sea." Eliot borrowed the line from _Tristan und Isolde_.
> 
> Aziraphale’s prayer is very loosely based on the Lord’s Prayer.
> 
> Kudos and comments mean the world to me, so if you enjoyed this, please do let me know. I'm on Tumblr as [thetunewillcome](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/thetunewillcome). Thanks for reading!


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